Polish PM urges ‘concrete steps’ by Nato to address border crisis
The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has called for Nato to take “concrete steps” to solve the migrant crisis on Europe’s border as dozens of asylum seekers reportedly broke through Poland’s border defences with Belarus.
Morawiecki said that Poland, Lithuania and Latvia may ask for consultations under article 4 of the Nato charter, indicating they believe their territorial integrity, political independence or security is threatened.
European countries have warned that the increasingly tense situation on the frontier may lead to a conflict with Belarus, whose president, Alexander Lukashenko, has been accused of encouraging thousands of people from the Middle East to travel to Europe’s borders.
Belarus and its main backer, Russia, would probably react angrily to any new deployment of Nato troops to eastern Europe. This week Russia dispatched nuclear-capable bombers and paratroopers on training missions to Belarus as the countries tested their joint air defences.
Lukashenko, the autocratic leader of Belarus, has also vowed to retaliate against new EU sanctions that are due to be announced on Monday.
The sanctions are expected to target Belarusian officials, as well as travel agencies and airlines that have helped ferry migrants to Belarus. European officials have managed to strike deals with a number of airlines to limit flights with migrants to Belarus.
The EU and Belarusian foreign policy chiefs spoke directly about the migrant crisis for the first time on Sunday.
Josep Borrell said he had spoken to Belarus’s foreign minister, Vladimir Makei, by phone about “the precarious humanitarian situation” at the Belarus Poland border.
“The current situation is unacceptable and must stop. People should not be used as weapons,” Borrell said in a tweet.
In Belarus’s statement about the conversation, Makei said any sanctions would be “hopeless” and “counterproductive”.
On Saturday, the Syrian carrier Cham Wings Airlines said it would halt flights to Minsk “due to the difficult situation on the Belarus-Poland border and because most of the travellers on our flights to Minsk are Syrian citizens”. Turkey has also blocked flights for migrants from Istanbul.
The turmoil on the border has continued, however. Polish police reported that there were 223 attempts to cross the border from Belarus on Saturday and that one group of 50 people broke through defences on Poland’s border near the village of Starzyna. They were later caught by Polish authorities and returned to the border, the state news agency PAP reported.
The police also said the helmet of an officer serving at the border had been damaged after a stone was thrown at him.
The spokesperson for Poland’s security services, Stanisław Żaryn, wrote on Twitter on Sunday about reports of trucks carrying stones and rubble from Belarusian construction companies to areas near the border.
Aid agencies have warned of a growing humanitarian crisis as thousands of asylum seekers, many from Iraq and Syria, stay at campsites on the border with temperatures plunging below freezing.
Two diplomats said on Thursday that the EU was considering imposing sanctions on Belarus’s main airport in an attempt to make it more difficult for airlines to bring in migrants.
“We will give the green light to extending the legal framework of our sanctions against Belarus so that it can be applied to everyone who participates in smuggling migrants to this country,” Borrell told the French weekend newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.